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Friday, 30 January 2009 12:00

I have only seen blood in syringes, or on a scraped knee.

I have only attended the funerals of the old and sick.

I have only smelt the burnt meat of cows and chickens.

How can we be here and they be there?

How can the borders remain closed?

How can we sleep at night?

And like a child, I ask, “What can I do?”

What can I do against decades of betrayal and cowardice?

What can I do against minds nursed on television and souls fattened to complacency?

What can I do when others show such tepid, bland concern?

What can I do against the lies, told over and over and over, till I struggle to remember the truth?

I hear an answer, as old as Noah:

Pray. Pray. Stand and pray. Remember though others forget. Stand though others sleep. Pray and know your prayers are heard. Pray and know the shuhadaa rejoice. Pray and remember the children will be with Ibrahim. Pray for your own soul, pray for their pain.

Pray, pray, pray, because almost no one else is listening.

Abu Abdurrahman
Maryland